


Everything

by wenwen



Series: Beyond Life [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dead Superhero Club, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Intergalactic road trips, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sisterhood of Sacrificed Super-Assassins, Team Bonding, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 06:17:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21266429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wenwen/pseuds/wenwen
Summary: Dying hurt, but falling hundreds of feet and landing on solid rock would do that.Fortunately, death doesn't always mean that it's over.





	Everything

Dying hurt, but Natasha figured falling hundreds of feet and landing on solid rock would do that.  _ Blunt force trauma to the back of the head and spine,  _ she thinks clinically above the blinding pain.  _ Synapses firing for the final time.  _ She can't move. Her eyes stare fixedly up, and her last sight will be Clint, silhouetted against the cliff and the murky purple skies of this miserable planet. 

_ Ha, _ she thinks without any real humor. She was always better at hand to hand than him. 

The sky lights up, or maybe that is her vision whiting out, and she has never been afraid of dying but now that her time is here Natasha is almost reluctant to go. 

But it's worth it.

A moment like a blink, and just like that Natasha is no longer lying in excruciating pain at the bottom of the cliff. 

She takes a deep breath, almost cautiously, and it comes easy enough. Nothing hurts. She can feel her heart thrumming in her ribcage, clenches a fist experimentally and feels her muscles tense. 

She's standing at the top of that mountain she'd complained to Clint about climbing on their way up, between the massive walls that open to the edge of the cliff. The red-skulled guide is gone. So are the line and anchor from Natasha's grappling hook. 

Instead, there's a green-skinned woman standing on the edge of the cliff, gesticulating sharply at the air over the cliff as she screams, "I hate you, you selfish monster, you murderer!" into the empty space. Her voice is hoarse, like she's been standing here yelling for a while.

She's wearing those same kind of space pirate leathers that Rocket had on. Red hair tumbles halfway down the woman's back, the color vivid enough to clash with her skin. Them, Pepper, Wanda -- Natasha wonders what it is about the Avengers or this intergalactic war or whatever that seems to attract redheaded women.

"Gamora, I presume," said Natasha dryly. It looks like female assassins are the trend in soul sacrifices these days.

The woman whirls, one hand flying to an empty sheath at her waist. Her eyes dart up and down Natasha, assessing in a way that's very familiar. Natasha keeps her arms relaxed and her body loose. She's already died once; she's not sure she wants to see if she can die again so quickly. 

"Did you wanna keep shouting into the void?" she asks. "If you're busy, I can come back."

"This is not a void," says Gamora, giving her a strange look. "Voids are much darker.”

Natasha supposes she’ll take the space pirate’s word for it. 

Gamora's eyes narrow. "Are you -- are you Terran?" she demands. "How did you get here?"

"Funny story," says Natasha. "I jumped off a cliff."

Gamora is up in her space in a heartbeat and Natasha stiffens to keep from reaching for a weapon. "Why?" There's a rising hope in her voice as she meets Natasha's eyes. "Thanos. Did he fail?"

Natasha swallows. "No," she rasps, and the other woman flinches a step backwards. "He succeeded. My friends and I came here to stop him." 

Gamora takes another step to the side, turning a little so she's angled towards the cliff again. There’s nothing to see, but she looks anyways. "Which of your  _ friends -- "  _ she spits, "threw you over the edge?"

The low moan of the wind echoes over the gap, but its fingers touch neither her nor Gamora. "Like I said," says Natasha neutrally. "I jumped."

Silence falls between them. Gamora's face could be carved from stone, and Natasha is sure that hers is equally blank.

If she goes to the edge and looks over, will she see her broken body sprawled on those rocks? Will she see Gamora’s? Or will those stones be empty, as if their respective falls had never happened.

"What did you want with the Soul Stone?" Gamora asks at last. Her voice is distant, her eyes moreso. "It's gone. Thanos took it. You died for nothing."

There's no way to say it in a way that won't sound crazy, and Natasha's not actually sure how the whole thing works or why she's able to talk to the Gamora who Thanos sacrificed. Maybe this is a hallucination of her dying brain, to give her a sense of closure and purpose before she expires. The human mind is funny like that. "Time travel. We've made a plan to collect the Stones to fix what Thanos did, put everything back the way it was."

Maybe time travel is not so far-fetched to someone who probably grew up on stories of what the Stones could do, because the other woman just scoffs, "Fix it? With the Infinity Stones? You're as mad as he is." Gamora's mouth twists. "You couldn't have known what the Soul Stone would cost." 

What did it cost? 

For Natasha, everything.

"It'll be worth it. We can win this," Natasha insists, because it has to be, doesn't it? Clint would have made it back up the cliff, Natasha's anchors are -- were -- always good; even if he didn't, he could quantum jump straight from the side of the cliff. And so, on an indulgent whimsy, she adds, "We  _ will  _ win this. We're the Avengers, it’s our specialty."

Gamora lights up. “Avengers! The muscular man mentioned you! ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,’ like Kevin Bacon!” 

Natasha pauses. Kevin Bacon? As in,  _ Footloose  _ and  _ A Few Good Men  _ and  _ Patriot’s Day? _ “Right,” she says anyways. “Yeah, Thor told us about you guys too. He made it to Earth right before -- ” she snaps her fingers. “Your crew,” she starts, and stops. It’s no easier when she doesn’t even know Gamora. “They didn’t make it. Except Rocket, and Nebula.”

Gamora’s face wipes itself blank in a split second. “I see,” she says.

"Sorry," Natasha offers. There's not much more she can do than that. She squints at the horizon. It’s murky, the space where the atmosphere touches the ground shrouded by clouds. She clears her throat. “How does this work, anyways?” she asks lightly. 

Gamora’s eyes snap to hers and narrow. “You don’t know how it works and you jumped anyways?” she demanded. “That was very stupid.”

“Ouch,” says Natasha mildly. “Well, we knew it had been done. Nebula told us Thanos came to Vormir with you and left with only the Stone.” 

“A soul for a Soul; you must give up that which you love,” Gamora agreed, her mouth twisting bitterly. “That is what the creature with the red skull told him, and my death was the price. There is always a price.”

The keeper of the Soul Stone recycled his welcome speech, it seemed. "So less 'Abraham and Isaac' and more  _ Ender's Game," _ Natasha summarizes.

"A bra-ham?" Gamora repeats curiously. "Eye-sack? What is an Endersgame?"

Oh boy. For the sake of Christianity, the Black Widow should not have to be the one to give the alien the theology talk. "Abraham and Isaac was like you and Thanos," says Natasha, ignoring the way Gamora stiffens. "Except Isaac gave himself willingly and Abraham didn't actually kill him in the end, because only the intent mattered. In  _ Ender's Game, _ death was necessary for victory."

Gamora's lip curls. "That was very stupid of Eye-sack," she decides.

Natasha opens her mouth to clarify that the intent of Abraham and Isaac was not, in fact, to bring about the demise of half the population of the universe, and closes it again. She has a feeling she will need to pick her battles. “Does it have to be a person?” she asks instead. “Steve has this really awful pair of pants -- khakis -- that he’s completely head over heels for. Couldn’t he just toss those over the edge?”

Gamora stares at her, very obviously filters through the Natasha’s words for the important bits, and says, “No pants. A soul for a Soul. There is nothing of comparable value, particularly when it is that of a person you love.” 

“Okay,” says Natasha. The universe thinks she’s worth more than a pair of pants -- good to know. “So we’re dead. So why -- ” she waves a hand at their surroundings, “is all this still happening? How am I talking to you? What happens if I jump off a cliff?”

“It is,” says Gamora, squinting at Natasha like it might make her make more sense. “There’s no why. Do you want to jump off the cliff again?”

“No,” Natasha says after a pause. “Look, how long have you been here?”

Gamora frowns. “A few hours, no more,” she responds.

A few hours. “You’ve been dead for five years,” says Natasha, firmly suppressing her rising panic. How much time has passed as she’s been standing here? Have the rest of the Avengers returned? Did it work? Did they fail?

The other woman doesn’t look surprised. “Time and space follow different rules here,” she says. “We’re beyond life. The universe doesn’t have the same constraints anymore.”

“Do we?” Natasha asks.

Gamora stills, and tilts her head a little. “I don’t know,” she says. She twists, scanning the ground, and bends to pick up a jagged shard of rock, testing the edge against her palm. 

Natasha wonders if she should stop her, but she’s curious too. Gamora slashes the thin strip of skin between her sleeve and her bracer. The skin splits, and blood a darker green than her skin spills out. “Ouch,” she says, dropping the rock and looking betrayed.

They both wait. The wound doesn’t disappear. Gamora finally clamps a hand over it and squeezes, an annoyed slant to her eyes as the blood drips between her fingers. Natasha unzips her catsuit to tear off a strip off the bottom of her tank top. 

Gamora gives it a momentarily suspicious glance before taking it when Natasha offers it to her. “Thank you,” she says. 

"Welcome to the Sisterhood of Sacrificed Super-Assassins," Natasha says dryly.

Gamora's eyes narrow as she ties off her makeshift bandage. "What is this Sisterhood? I was here first," she says, stepping forward menacingly. "I was the one sacrificed first. Why are you welcoming me?"

"Congratulations," Natasha says, unmoved. "You can be a founding member."

"Founding member," Gamora repeats slowly, tasting the sound of it on her tongue, and squints at Natasha. "Okay," she decides. "Founding member. I like that."

“Great,” says Natasha, taking stock. “Now we know we can be hurt. We could probably die, but we don’t need to test that right now.” Gamora nods in agreement. “Think we have to stay here for the rest of eternity? That’s a fastpass to insanity and that’s not on my docket today.”

Gamora gives the droplets of blood glistening on the ground a thoughtful look. “Maybe not,” she says.

Natasha rocks back on her feet. “Wanna get off this rock?”

“I do,” Gamora concedes, a glint slowly appearing in her eyes. She pauses. “What will we do when we get off?”

Find their friends. Watch them ruin Thanos’ plans. Maybe pop out of the soul dimension long enough to right the world. Retire to a safe afterlife behind the scenes in a world where female assassins are not needed. “Everything,” Natasha says.

Getting off the rock, just in itself, sounds more daunting than it actually is. Natasha’s watched too many movies where the hero tries to escape, only to be kept running endless circles by inexplicable forces. 

Fortunately, that doesn’t happen when she and Gamora pick their way back down the mountain. There’s still no sign of the Red Skull, and no other life or whatever passes as that in this strange, possibly pre-death afterlife. 

Gravel shifts under her foot on a particularly steep incline, and she shifts her center of gravity even as she slips so she’ll land on her feet, but a strong hand grips her bicep and cuts her fall short. Gamora’s strong -- stronger than Natasha, not so much as Steve -- and she hauls her back onto the narrow path. A few rocks clatter down the slope as Natasha regains her balance, tumbling down, down, until they’re no longer visible to her eye. 

“Thanks,” she says, eyeing the treacherous slope with renewed caution. 

“Vormir has taken enough,” is Gamora’s response. 

Natasha’s not entirely sure this is really Vormir, just like she’s still not entirely sure she’s not hallucinating everything that’s happened since she hit the ground, so she just nods. 

Problem Number Two, which past Natasha had kept deferring to future Natasha, is exactly how to get off the planet. It seems so far that all they have with them are what they died with -- Natasha’s Bites, the batons sheathed over her back, the clothes that they wear. Does the soul dimension randomly spawn convenient spacecrafts? 

Fortunately for present Natasha, there is an angular shape jutting out of the deserted flatlands. It's some sort of spacecraft, but not Quill's. Natasha doesn't recognize it, but Gamora clearly does. "He left it," she says, half-laughs with a strange triumph.

“Thanos?” Natasha asks as Gamora picks up her pace. “He came in that...thing?” It seems awfully small for a conqueror of worlds to be flying around it.

“It is a dropship,” Gamora explains, running expert hands over its surface. Natasha looks it up and down and estimates that at least twenty percent of the thing has embedded itself in Vormir’s surface. Natasha’s not an expert on interplanetary travel, so she stays back and watches Gamora fiddle with something and yank on something else, and she’ll be damned, but a door hisses open. Gamora whirls with a victorious light in her eyes.

“This thing flies?” Natasha asks, taking a cautious step forward. “It looks like a rock.” Because it does. And it doesn’t look like it’s coming out of the ground, let alone off the ground, anytime soon.

“Mostly down,” Gamora admits, whisking into the dropship. Natasha decides she has nothing better to do than follow. The dropship is spartan and dim, metal walls and bolts designed for efficiency over comfort.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Natasha says, and her words echo in the narrow hallway. “If we’re dead, how would we get back to...life?”

“I don’t know that we’re dead,” Gamora says, and adds matter-of-factly, “Ghosts don’t exist.” 

Normally, Natasha would agree, but she’s eighty percent certain that she is, in fact, dead, and running around with another Soul Stone sacrifice that she’s also about eighty percent certain is dead. That sounds pretty ghost-like to her. The eventual conclusion she reaches is to consult someone else who is dead and thus more likely to be accessible, has a history of cheating death, and knowledge about the extra-normal.

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Natasha says, "but I think we need to find Loki."

Gamora wrinkles her nose. "That one is definitely dead," she says.

"I doubt that would stop him," says Natasha with a sigh. "Come on. Where do you go to find a dead neo-Norse demigod?"

“Valhalla,” says Gamora immediately. She pauses, frowns. “Or Hel?”

“Let’s try Valhalla,” Natasha decides. Valhalla sounds a lot nicer than hell, and if this is going to be the last road trip she ever takes, she’s damn sure she’d rather end up in Valhalla.

Miracle of miracles, the ship not only un-embeds itself from Vormir, but also breaks atmosphere and sends them hurtling into the black with minimal fuss. Natasha, booted feet propped up on the dashboard, watches the stars streak past and says, “Tell me about your crew.”

She gets an immediate suspicious glare in response, which makes her smile. “Tell me about yours, and I’ll tell you about mine,” she offers. “Here, I’ll go first. There’s a guy on my team who crawls around in air vents all day for fun, insists on both pineapple and anchovies on his pizza, and always makes me hot chocolate on rainy days. He loves this dumb TV show called Dog Cops -- if he could, he’d watch it dawn to dusk.” Her voice has drifted into wistfulness. “He was my partner, the one who always had my back. His name is Clint, and I would do anything for him.” She slants a glance sideways at Gamora. “I have a feeling you have one of those on your team, too.”

“Yes,” says Gamora seriously, but her eyes soften. “Peter. He is a dumbass.” Natasha turns away to hide her smile. “He is half-Terran. He was raised by space pirates who he thought were going to eat him, and has this -- ” she gestures aimlessly in the air, “ --inexplicable fascination with dancing.” Her nose wrinkles, but she’s smiling too. 

“What about your sister?” Natasha asks. “We’ve been -- we were working with her.”

Gamora turns narrowed eyes on Natasha. “Your turn,” she deflects reprovingly. “Tit for tit.” 

Natasha thinks it must be Peter who’s to blame for the Guardians’ mixed-up Earth cultural references -- but to be fair, the guy seemed like he really tried. “Okay,” she says, swinging her boots off the dash and crossing her legs in front of her. “There’s Steve. He’s like -- ” she juts out her chin and intones, “Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Stubbornest bastard I ever met.” Gamora’s head is tilted with no understanding whatsoever. “Really, he’s a softy,” Natasha continues. “Big old heart. Like an overgrown golden retriever.” She pauses. “You know what that is?”

Gamora’s brow furrows. “Like...a rodent?” 

“Not exactly,” says Natasha. “It’s a dog. Bigger than a rat, longer legs, longer fur, slobbers everywhere -- ” Gamora’s face twists more into disgust and confusion with every description. Natasha gives up. “They’re cute. It’s a good thing,” she says, and leaves it at that. 

Gamora, both legs dangling over the side of her armrest as she sprawls sideways in the pilot’s seat, watches the black beyond the glass. “My sister,” she says, the corner of her mouth crooking up in a reluctant smile, “hates me.”

Natasha naps. When she wakes, Gamora’s poking at something that’s clearly a computer but looks like a solid sheet of steel with glowing alien letters on it. “We have a heading,” Gamora says, when she notices Natasha’s scrutiny.

It turns out, the coordinates to Valhalla exist, but nobody’s been able to confirm them because you can’t actually get there unless you’re dead. Gamora and Natasha, upon discussion, agree that given that they are at least somewhat dead, they should have a pretty good chance of finding it. 

“Get some rest,” says Natasha, watching Gamora’s eyes take on that particular fixed quality of someone who desperately wants sleep but is far too self-disciplined to even consider giving in to bodily demands. “I’ll keep watch.” For what, or what she would do about it if she did see something, she doesn’t know.

'Something' happens very suddenly. One second they’re floating through empty space, millions of miles from the nearest star, and the next they’re hurtling through a giant stone archway that definitely wasn’t there before. 

“Hey,” she says loudly, gripping the armrests of her seat as the turbulence throws her against the sides and snaps her head forward so quickly she almost cracks her forehead against her own knee. 

Gamora comes awake with a flail that somehow looks graceful, and she gets a hand around the back of her seat in time for the entire ship to lurch. Her feet leave the ground and she’s clinging on with one hand and a grimace of concentration that’s the last thing Natasha sees before a blinding white light forces her to squeeze her eyes shut reflexively. 

The ship hits something and skids, shuddering into an abrupt landing, and this time Natasha’s thrown free, tumbling through the air. She turns just enough to hit the wall with her shoulder instead of headfirst. The joint crunches nastily but she breathes through the jolt of pain, twisting to land in a low crouch braced against the wall.

The ship isn’t moving anymore. In fact, it’s not making any noise at all, like it’s powered itself down without any input from either of them. It's both ominous and promising. “So,” says Natasha. “Think we’re here?”

“Perhaps,” says Gamora distantly, staring out. 

The light has dimmed to a more manageable daylight instead of the holy glow of heaven or whatever. They’ve landed on the edge of a cliff, though it’s more like a plateau or a sky island or something like that. She and Gamora and the dropship are on one side; a man in shining golden armor with an equally golden spear and a stone archway filled with white mist are on the other. Natasha cranes to look over the edge, but all she sees is that originless light.

Gamora leads the way to the hatch and slaps her hand on a button that makes the door hiss open, but then she stands at the entrance to stare suspiciously at the man on the far side. Natasha can sympathize, but hey, she’s feeling a little reckless since she already maybe-died once. She hops down, and hears Gamora follow her as she saunters up to the arch and its guardian. 

"Natalia Alianova Romanova, daughter of Ivan," says the man, the gold of his eyes glimmering with impossible eternities. "Gamora Zen Whoberi Ben Titan, daughter of -- "

"Do not finish that," Gamora interrupts, crossing her arms and scowling thunderously. "What are you called?"

"I am Heimdall the All-Seeing," the man answers, implacable. Natasha notices that he didn’t give a last name or a parent’s name, and isn’t that a double standard?

The name ‘Heimdall’ itself is telling, though, not just from SHIELD files but from Thor’s accounts. And Thor was very specific about what happened to this guy. "No offense," says Natasha, "but aren't you dead?"

"Yes," says Heimdall the Succinct Answerer. 

Gamora rolls her eyes and makes a move like she wants to draw a knife but forgot that she didn't have any on her. "Is this Valhalla?" she demands, crossing her arms. 

Heimdall turns his distant gaze on her. "Yes," he says, and elaborates, "I will stand guard at the gates of Valhalla until the End of Times."

"Cool," says Natasha, deciding to take this at face value. "Hey, listen, we're looking for Loki. Can we go in?" 

Heimdall pauses again, gives them both a look that could be scrutinizing or soulless depending on who you asked. "You will find what you need within," he proclaims, and steps aside.

Natasha and Gamora exchange an equally suspicious glance. "Will we return here, once we have?" Gamora asks. 

"You will return twice more," Heimdall assures them. "This is the final resting place for warrior souls and gentle souls. As long as the soul remains intact, it is drawn to Valhalla before it fades."

And another tally for the ominous column. Natasha glances back at the dropship embedded patiently in the ground a dozen meters from Heimdall’s post. “Fun. Let’s get this bread,” she says, and as Gamora’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, adds, “Let’s go.” She steps through the archway and into the mist. 

For a moment, that’s all she can see -- the opaque clouds of white droplets swirling in the air. She takes three steps, sightlessly, trustingly. Abruptly, it clears, and the world beyond is so rich and vivid Natasha could believe she had been blind, before.

Valhalla is Earth.

“No,” Gamora corrects. “Valhalla moulds itself to the dream of its inhabitants. It takes us where we must go and becomes that which its inspiration holds most dear.” 

It goes unsaid that there is no way Loki’s Valhalla is Earth. 

Then again, Heimdall never said that they would find Loki here. Natasha recognizes that skyline, and grief twists her throat. She swallows. “Come on,” she said. “I know who we’re going to find here.” 

Tony’s Valhalla or afterlife or whatever is the old Avengers Tower -- specifically, a workshop with a view over Manhattan. There’s socket wrenches and handheld blowtorches littering the lab benches, soiled rags on every other surface, and the makings of a robot in the center of the floor. Tony, in battered jeans, a welding helmet with the visor flipped up, and the sleeves of his oil-stained Nirvana t-shirt rolled up to his elbows, stands in the middle of the chaos and stares at them as if he’s seen a ghost. Maybe he has; jury's still out on that one. “Nat?” he croaks.

Natasha jerks her chin at the elevator doors. “Get in, loser,” she says, a smirk curling at the corner of her mouth. “We’ve got a dropship.”

"Um," says Tony. He checks over his shoulder, squints at Natasha. "What the fuck?"

"Language," says Natasha mockingly. "You kiss my goddaughter with that mouth? It's a jailbreak, dummy. You in or out?"

"Definitely out, get me out of here," says Tony, scrambling out of his welding gear. "You know, nobody in my entire life or death has ever called me that? My robot’s DUM-E, I’m Tony, easy mistake, I know, we’re both so dashingly handsome. I'll have you know I'm a certified genius. My dad got me tested when I was like, five." He pauses long enough to take a breath. “Emerald Assassin lady must be Quill’s chick. Gamora.”

“This one talks a lot,” says Gamora, giving him a distrustful once-over. 

“He’s kind of like your Peter,” says Natasha.

“Ah,” says Gamora, nodding sagely. “A dumbass.”

“Um,” Tony says, visibly offended. 

“Exactly,” says Natasha. 

She looks at the debris cluttering Tony’s workspace. Circuitry crowds up against coils of spare wire piled atop sheets of metal. There’s a very familiar chestplate behind him, and beside it, a half-dissected gauntlet. "You landed in the afterlife and immediately started building another suit?" she says dryly, completely unsurprised. "You're never happy unless you have a mission."

"Glass houses, Rushman," Tony warns, jabbing a finger at her from what he clearly thinks is the safe distance of two lab benches. "Glass houses."

“Bring it,” Natasha says, fondness curling in her chest. “I know it’s your security blanket.

“Stop that,” Tony orders, puffing up like an offended turkey. 

Natasha ignores him. “Your nightlight. Your teddy bear.”

"No," insists Tony, scowling.

"Your baby bottle," says Natasha sweetly. Tony shakes a wrench impotently at her.

_ “Anyways,”  _ Tony says loudly, beating a tactical retreat. “I know I have a certain magnetic draw, but you must have been here looking for me for a reason. I have a portfolio of admirable qualities I’m sure you’ve looked through -- and I charge by the hour, mind you -- ”

“I hate to burst your bubble,” Natasha interrupts, “but we were actually looking for Loki.”

She regrets it almost immediately, because hurt flashes through Tony’s eyes before he’s brushing it off with an airy, “Oh, right, megalomaniacal demigods are totally in vogue this season -- ” 

“Tony,” Natasha cuts in gently. “We didn’t even know you were dead.”

Tony rubs his chin. “Oh. So much for the dead being all-knowing, huh? Yeah, I died. Not fun, one out of ten would not recommend. You know, in movies the hero always has some dramatic last words, something wise and touching as his loved ones send him off? None of that from me, just some panicked gasping like a way-in-the-back extra. You know what?” he adds, his thoughts crashing into each other like runaway train cars. “You don’t even know what happened do you?”

Natasha and Gamora exchange wary looks. “How long has it been for you since the jump?” Natasha asks.

Tony squints. “Couple of weeks. There was this big throwdown. We got the Infinity Gauntlet together. Hulk Ph.D un-snapped everyone. 2014 Thanos showed up in 2023 with an entire army and he was  _ not  _ a happy camper. We kicked his ass, I died heroically in the process, badda bing badda boom.” He claps his hands together.

That takes a moment to process. She almost forgets to breathe. “We won,” Natasha says, but it’s numb, empty.

Tony’s answering grin is crooked and more than a little wry. “We won,” he confirms.

“Good,” Gamora says fiercely, her eyes bitter and triumphant and relieved and wistful all at once. It's intensely private and Natasha forces herself to look away. 

"So," Tony braces himself against a lab table. "I take the wind out of your sails or anything? Ruin your galactic crusade because we already won the war?"

That's a good question. From what Tony's saying, she can retire knowing that she helped avert the body count from the Snap, settle in her own afterlife here for good. The Earth will keep turning without her, and her friends are all happy and safe -- even Tony, here with his workshop and robot and the almost-finished Iron Man Mark Several-Something-Hundred armor scattered on the surfaces around him. But Natasha is selfish. She doesn't just want her friends to be happy and safe; she wants to see them again. She doesn't believe in prophecy, but Heimdall had all but told her that it wasn't her time to die yet. She shrugs. "Might still go on a little road trip still," she says. "Thinking about hitting up the old Earth." She flashes him a look from beneath her eyelashes. "Got any toys for me? I lost my stuff."

"That's wildly unreasonable of you, Romanoff," Tony says, narrowing his eyes at her. "We're both dead and you expect me to have whipped something up for you here?"

Natasha raises an eyebrow delicately. "I'm only mostly dead, actually. Is that a no?"

"Of course not," grumbles Tony, turning to rummage through the cabinets against the far wall with bad grace. Natasha hides her victorious smile. 

“So, when do you think you’ll be ready for wheels up?” she asks, taking a seat on the nearest empty stool. There are not many of them -- stools, there are plenty, but most of them have tablets or sheets of armor or power tools where the lab benches ran out of room. “Thirty minutes?”

"Okay," says Tony, turning around to frown at her. "You can't just say, 'Hey, we're leaving now, get me weapons and your incredibly advanced armor and let's fly,' it doesn't work like that. I'm a genius engineer, not a wizard." 

"Playboy, billionaire, philanthropist," Natasha fills in for him helpfully, deadpan.

He throws up his hands and whirls. "Will you ever let that go?" he demands. "Pep brought that up on our honeymoon. Our  _ honeymoon,  _ Red Menace, I know you're the one who told her."

"At least you didn't accept the waiter's offer of strawberry champagne," Natasha says, serene. 

"Yeah," says Tony, offended. "I can remember things that might  _ kill my wife,  _ thanks."

"You thought about it," she points out. “You definitely hesitated. It took you like five seconds, at least.”

"How do you even -- uh, nope. There is absolutely no concrete evidence pointing to that ever happening," Tony covers quickly. "Slander. No jury could ever convict me unless they were bought out. Or replaced by LMDs. Or just incompetent."

Gamora, who has been watching them volley and forth like a spectator at a tennis match, raises her hand. 

Tony gives first her then Natasha an incredulous look. "Are you -- is she for real?" Natasha shrugs, nonplussed. Gamora scowls murderously and doesn't put her hand down. "Fine," says Tony. "Shoot." Gamora glances up at her empty hand in confusion and Tony quickly amends it to, "You have a question?"

"Your shower," says Gamora. "Where is it? I don't understand the things you are talking about and I have not showered in days."

Tony blinks rapidly. "Uh. Down the hall, left, left, right -- do you even know how to use an Earth shower, Master Yaddle?"

"A shower sounds good, actually," says Natasha. "Is this place like the real thing?"

Tony waves at her distractedly, already steering Gamora out or the workshop without actually touching her. She tolerates it, but not without a warning glare Tony and a slightly less belligerent glance at Natasha, who nods at her to go on. "Yeah, you know where everything is, make yourself at home. Me casa es su casa and all that."

Tony's Valhalla is the Tower before it all fell apart -- before the Accords, before Ultron, before SHIELD turned out to be Hydra and before the trust that used to be between the Avengers frayed and snapped. But there's new bits to it too -- 

Natasha opens a door next to the elevator banks she knows was never in the original Tower and finds a set of stairs. There's another door at the bottom, and when she opens that, she steps into a room that's warm and homey and familiar, with natural wood and knitted blankets and toys scattered here and there on the couches and the chairs. This is Tony's cabin, the home where he and Pepper raised Morgan. She can see the forest beyond the windows, hear the chirp of birdsong, as if she had travelled hundreds of miles instead of down a flight of stairs. 

This, too, is something private, but Natasha is curious and has never been good at boundaries. She ventures inside, bypasses Tony's basement workshop to climb the stairs to where the bedrooms are. 

They're all empty, but Natasha feels a pang when she sticks her head into Morgan's room, sees the quilt folded neatly on the bed and the toys and books untouched on their shelves. A house is just a building; a room is just four walls and a door. This one has traces of the soul that should give it life -- but life is meant to be lived, so it’s a relief that the room is empty. 

There’s another out-of-place door at the end of the hallway, next to the closet that she knows without looking holds the family photo albums. She takes the stairs behind it, descends into the airy, empty hallway of the Avengers facility in upstate New York. It’s a cloudy day out on the landing pad beyond the wall of windows.

The next misplaced door she finds puts her in Tony’s old Malibu monstrosity, with the elegant curving walls and sloping roofs, the California sun streaming in from the skylights, the waves crashing against the cliffs beneath her feet. 

A college dorm room. An old, cluttered garage. A victorian mansion with classic lines. Natasha walks through every place Tony has ever called home and emerges on the far side into the residential quarters of the Avengers Tower.

Natasha stayed here only briefly, in the aftermath of the Battle of New York before things settled down at SHIELD, and every now and then when she was in the city between missions until the Accords. She was hardly the most absentee of the Avengers; in fact, she was probably the one who had lived here the most besides Bruce. Her door is marked with a stylized red hourglass because Tony is sentimental and tacky like that, and the palm reader lock beeps open under her touch. 

It's her rooms, but as Tony remembers them. The 9 millimetre RAMI isn't under the counter, her collection of knives isn't squirreled away in the nooks and crannies where she stashed them when she checks, but her old Widow's Bites she finds in the drawer next to her bed, and a SHIELD-issued sidearm taped to the underside of her bedframe. There's soft, plain t-shirts and sweats with the Avengers facility logo on them in the closet, and she takes a set into the bathroom with her. 

When she's done with her shower, she pauses in the doorway in a cloud of stream and considers the bed. She's slept once since she maybe-died, and logically she's fairly certain that if she sleeps again she'll likely wake up. She has an irrational fear, though, that she'll wake up and this all will be gone, a lingering hallucination of Vormir, so she takes her battered catsuit and the Bites and the handgun and pads out of her rooms to the elevator. She doesn't take any detours this time and taps the button for Tony's workshop. 

This entire time in the Tower has been very quiet -- not a single soul besides herself and Gamora and Tony, and none of Tony's robots trundling here and there; though hallways light up automatically, they are still and empty. As the elevator car ascends, Natasha clears her throat and asks, "Friday?" 

There's no response. 

She pauses; then, “JARVIS?” 

JARVIS is a strange thing to define in terms of life and death -- or is it just Vision, now? Did either of them have a soul, when it was the Soul Stone that brought Vision into existence? Consciousness? True sentience? What happens when all that they were no longer exists, scattered into the wind or even more irreparably lost? Do they have an afterlife for their own or are they just gone?

She doesn’t know, and the continued silence does not enlighten her. 

The elevator doors open with a quiet ding, and Natasha walks in on Tony and Gamora perched around a lab bench that’s been perfunctorily cleared by way of dumping its contents onto the floor. There’s two steaming boxes of pizza on top instead, smelling of grease and roasted meat, and Natasha’s eyebrows climb towards her hairline. 

“Don’t,” warns Tony jabbing a slice dripping melted cheese and tomato sauce in her direction before she can ask anything. “It’s driving me crazy, I swear to God. Food doesn’t just appear, matter can’t transmute without energy, but -- ” the toppings slide dangerously on his pizza as he gestures “ --  _ none of that _ showed up on any of the cameras or sensors. I call the pizza place and then pizzas appear. No energy build up, no  _ movement,  _ between one frame and the next it’s just there. In the elevator. Which comes up here and opens by itself. It doesn’t make  _ sense.” _

“Tragic,” says Natasha dryly just to mess with him, because she’s pretty curious about how all of this works too. Earth rules clearly don’t apply what with all the pocket dimensions under their feet.

“Science heathen,” Tony mourns, but doesn’t try to stop her from helping herself to a slice. Likely because he values his fingers. 

It’s just shy of scalding the roof of her mouth, warm and gooey and cheesy with a hint of smoke and it could be Natasha’s heaven. “Nice,” she says appreciatively. 

“Yes,” agrees Gamora, a pleased slant to her eyes. She pops a bit of crust into her mouth and sucks the grease and tomato sauce off her fingers.

“Did you know Fiona’s never had pizza before?” Tony says idly, folding his slice in half and stuffing most of it into his cheek. 

“Hm,” says Natasha. Guess space pirates don’t have pizza in the big beyond.

“Who is Fiona?” asks Gamora as she reaches for another slice, missing the look Natasha gives Tony. “Is she good at fighting?”

“Uh huh,” lies Tony, blithely ignoring Natasha’s warning look. “The best. Anyways, so it'll be a couple hours until I can put everything together -- yes, Red October, I can whip up some things for you to underappreciate as you hit people with them -- so what's the play here?”

"Get in the dropship," says Natasha. "Go home." That was always the plan.

Tony squints at her. "All right," he allows. "There's some room for improvising there, but what the hell."

“There is another matter,” Gamora interjects, her face creased in concern. “I have been thinking. Heimdall said a worrisome thing, when we met earlier. You are dead. Natasha and I, we are not -- not all the way. If we die, there is a good chance that we will end up in an afterlife. If you leave Valhalla and die, you may not exist anymore -- here or anywhere else.” 

Tony stills at that. Natasha can read his thoughts as they flash across his face. No afterlife -- no more Pepper, no more Morgan. He’ll never see the Parker kid again, even when everyone he knows is dead and gone -- or dead and  _ here.  _ "How sure are we about that?" he hedges. "Give me some numbers here."

Natasha and Gamora exchange glances. There are no numbers; everything is a shot in the dark cobbled together from hearsay and old stories and one throwaway sentence from Heimdall. 

"Yeah, that?" Tony wags a finger between the two of them. "Not really reassuring."

Gamora shrugs. "It is my first time maybe-dying," she defends.

"Okay," says Tony. "I'm feeling nice. I'll accept that answer. What've you got, Romanova?"

"We can just not die," Natasha offers.

"That's fair," allows Tony. "All right, you've convinced me. I'm in."

"Good," says Gamora, eyeing him like he's a fascinating new species that she's never encountered before.

Natasha frowns and catches Gamora's eye. The other woman raises an eyebrow but turns away, taking a soldering knife with her as she wanders towards the bay windows. Tony, when he notices, makes an aborted lunge after her. "This is what happens when you invite strange assassins into my Tower," he bemoans, sinking back down into his chair and slouching over to cradle his chin in his hands. 

"Tony," says Natasha, and his attention snaps back to her, sharp brown eyes examining hers and skittering away. "Tony, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not trying to manipulate you or sugarcoat things so I'll get what I want. You know that if you leave, you might not get to come back, or ever see your family again. Not just for the rest of their lives, but eternity." 

Tony's smile is crooked and a touch wry but genuine. "Nat, have I ever been one to sit around if I have other options? Reverse engineering death sounds like something worth the challenge. I want to watch my daughter grow up." 

Natasha's own smile spills out before she can even consider stopping it, soft and gentle and warm. "Me too," she says. "We'll get there."

"Go team," says Tony with a half-hearted first pump. Natasha, before she swallows her smile, bumps her fist against his and makes a silent promise as she meets his eyes.  _ They’ll get there _ . 

"Good," declares Gamora, swivelling to pick her way back towards them again. "I have very good hearing," she explains when they look at her askance. "Your pep speak sounds like it is finished. We should discuss supplies -- we will need provisions for three for an extended flight. I do not know how long it will take us to arrive." 

"So," Tony says, and swivels back and forth in his chair. A socket wrench has found its way into his hand where it dangles absently, swaying back and forth. "About that."

Natasha narrows her eyes at him. "You have supplies," she points out. "You have all the supplies. What's the problem?"

“Here’s the thing,” Tony hedges. “See, I picked up a headache while I was here.”

Gamora blinks, nonplussed, and glances at Natasha, but Natasha knows just as much what Tony means as she does. 

The air blows in Natasha’s face as a blur of blue and silver zips in front of her. Natasha jerks back and drops her hand to her belt, and Gamora reaches for knives she no longer has, but Tony just rolls his eyes and deadpans, “Here it is again. Right on cue.”

“Hey, old man,” says the blur, now a person. “Setting record for most time spent on your ass, no?”

“You were an Avenger for less than a day,” Tony says without bite. “How’s that for a record?”

“Yap, yap, yap,” Pietro says dismissively. “Like small dog.” He turns, then, looks first Gamora then Natasha up and down. “Oh,” he says. “You.”

Natasha quirks a smile and glances at Tony. “You want to keep this one? I don’t know if he’ll fit, seems like he’ll take up a lot of room.”

Pietro lights up but tries hard not to show it. “Keep? Fit? You are going somewhere?”

“Yeah, I dunno,” says Tony. “Kinda high maintenance, if you know what I mean.”

"Gamora," says Natasha, as the alien assassin and the enhanced kid size each other up, "this is Pietro Maximoff. He's fast. Pietro, Gamora. She's a space pirate." 

"I am a Guardian," Gamora corrects. “Of the Galaxy.”

"Hello," says Pietro cheerfully, zipping in close and sidestepping Gamora's reflexive punch. "The world is very small if you run around it many, many times."

"Space is much harder to run around," Gamora says, dropping her hand to hover around her belt.

"I have never been to space before," Pietro volunteers, turning his head from side to side to examine Gamora more carefully. "You are going to space now with Stark, yes?"

"Earth, actually," Natasha corrects, leaning back against the table as Pietro abandons Gamora to attack the leftover pizza, nearly room temperature by now. "And life."

Pietro pauses, a gleam in his eyes as he chews at rapid speeds and swallows. "You will take me?" he asks, very carefully not hopeful. "I would see my sister again."

"Yeah, well, it's not that simple, buddy," says Tony, his tone much lighter than the worry in his eyes. "You die again out there and your immortal soul is dust. You'll never see your sister again, even after you both die."

"No," says Pietro confidently. "Not so. We are one soul, she and I. I will not, how to say, evaporate?" 

Natasha wrinkles her nose. 

"Sure, evaporate," says Tony flippantly. "Pretty sure that's not how it works. You, Pietro. She, Wanda."

Pietro crosses his arms across his chest. "Yes," he insists. "We are twins; our souls are not meant to be apart. I will go."

Tony gives him a long look, but Pietro's shoulders and his jaw are set. He shrugs. "All right, so that's the stowaway settled."

"He is not a stowaway if we are aware that he is on the ship," Gamora points out, frowning. She is, at this point, messing with Tony. Natasha's still not sure exactly when that began; Tony's not aware of this yet.

"Four's a good crew," Natasha decides. "Unless you've got some other kidnapped teenager hidden in your back pocket."

"I resent that," says Tony. "I didn't even want this one."

"Because you can't keep up, old man," Pietro shoots back, kicked back in a recliner on the far side of the workshop. He's on his feet again in a flash, leaning over to poke at one of the Iron Man gauntlets. 

"Don't touch that!" Tony yelps, flailing out of his own chair to snatch the piece of armor away. 

"Bah," says Pietro dismissively, already on the other side of the bench examining a tiny arc reactor.

"You landed here with nothing but the clothes on your back and I made you a suit, you ungrateful brat," says Tony without vitriol, extending clawed hands in his direction. "Is this what parenting a teenager is like? Oh God, is  _ Morgan _ going to go through this phase?"

"So, we fly to Earth? That easy?" Pietro says, ignoring Tony.

"Don't know," says Gamora. "We are going to find Loki and ask him." To Tony, she says, "They become very rebellious and disrespectful. Groot was a delightful child but then he learned defiance." 

“No,” says Tony, rearing back.

“Yes,” says Gamora mercilessly. 

“Loki?” Pietro asks, frowning. “He tried to take over the world, no? You will ask him how to reverse death?”

“Well, he didn’t do a very good job of it,” reasons Tony. “And Point Break insists he’s like, grey-ish at worst.”

The furrow between Pietro’s brow deepens. “And you trust him?”

“Nope,” Tony pops the word in his mouth languidly. 

“He knows more about the different dimensions than any of us do,” says Natasha. “And this is all just another dimension, right? Pretty sure if anyone can figure out how to cheat death, it’ll be him.”

Everything about this half-cocked plan is strange and new and impossible. But they've got one Guardian and three Avengers between them, and if anyone's going to manage this it'll be them. Natasha meets each of their eyes -- Pietro's electric blue and alight with excitement, Gamora's calm and focused and calculating, Tony's dark and warm and determined -- and sees the same hope and resolve reflected in them all. 

“Fuck it,” says Tony. “Let’s break out of the afterlife.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> To be continued??
> 
> I've been digging through my piles of unfinished drafts and look what I dusted off?
> 
> Back in May I watched Endgame and came out of the theater deeply unhappy because I've been #TeamBlackWidow since the second Iron Man (and also #TeamGoose but I'm not so concerned about that right now). Writing this in present tense makes me feel less angry.


End file.
